How to Read Paintings: The Knife Grinder by Kasimir Malevich
A remarkable composition in the Cubist-Futurist style
Kazimir Malevich was a Russian artist who was not afraid to break with convention.
Even when it came to his own art, he had a habit of turning away from his previous creations and towards new styles of painting in the space of just a few months.
Malevich was most active at the beginning of the 20th century. During his painting career, he worked in a variety of styles over several decades, but his most important works occurred between 1912 and 1918 when he concentrated primarily on the exploration of geometric forms (squares, triangles and circles) and their relationships within pictorial space.
This painting called The Knife Grinder or Principle of Glittering, was a crucial step on Malevich’s journey. With its fractured reality and repeated forms — like looking at the subject through a kaleidoscope — the work is a blend of Cubist and Futurist influences, and as such is considered one of the first and finest examples of Russian Cubist-Futurist painting.
Cubist-Futurist Depiction
The emergence of Cubism from around 1907 provided many European artists with a revolutionary method of depicting the world around them.
